Mexico: Tinacos Are Such Fun

There are times when I wonder if Americans knew ahead of time what really to expect in their desire to retire to Mexico they would actually go through with it. I mean, you could be standing in the shower, making like a polar bear all covered in a rich, white, foamy lather when suddenly the water just stops. It doesn't sputter, makes no sound, it does nothing to warn you.

It stops.

I was sitting at the computer around 9:30 this morning when I heard the roar of what could have been a bear coming from the shower-it was the wife. I ran in there thinking she might have slipped and fallen or someone was peeking at her through the window (not something uncommon where we live...once, while we were eating at our table these two guys threw back the curtain on our unscreened living room window and asked for a bite to eat and to use the bathroom). No, it was nothing more than the water had quit. There was my honey-dumpling looking like a polar bear wanting to bite someone's head off.

Of course, my beloved had just covered herself with shampoo and soap and there was nothing with which to rinse it. Not a drop of water was coming out of the showerhead. There was nothing coming out of any faucet in the entire house. She ran screaming through the house, quite blind, and holding her hands out in front of her like something out of one of the "Night of the Living Dead Zombie movies."

She wanted me to pour the water left in the Mr. Coffee over her head and somehow, through screaming, crying, and laughing, she rinsed. Well, sort of rinsed.

In Guanajuato, the water company pumps water to certain neighborhoods only at certain times in order to fill up monstrous tank-like objects called "tinacos." Literally, this word can mean a tub or an earthenware jar. In Mexico, is a tank on top of your roof that gets filled up once every few days through a pipe coming from somewhere in the city's bowels. When it is empty, you have to wait until the time at which the city runs the water to your neighborhood to refill it before you have water again.

Our landlord had the yearly cleaning of the tinacos yesterday. To do this, the faucet from the city's pipe to the tinaco has to be turned off, the water drained, the tinaco cleaned out, and then the faucet turned back on for the tinaco to refill.

Someone forgot to turn the faucet back on and we ended up emptying the tinaco with normal water use. Normally, you can get through a day and not empty it out. The tinaco actually looks like the back of your toilet bowel. It has that thingee that floats in the water and when it gets to a certain level, then it calls upon the city, if the city is running the water, to refill your tinaco.

At least, this is how our landlady explained it to us this morning while I was trying to calm the wife down. I think I understood her, though her Spanish is so fast I'm not sure anyone can understand her.

This is how water works, not the kind you drink, but bathe in, wash clothes and dishes in Mexico.

The water you drink...well that's a different Mexican adventure all together.

And it, like every single thing in this country, is an adventure.